In Democratic Individuality, I argued that at a high level of abstraction, modern conservatives, liberals and radicals believe that the best economic, social and political institutions foster each person’s individuality. Their differences are largely empirical or social theoretical. All clash with modern authoritarians. I will take up practical issues such as torture and the lineage of the neocons and link them to larger issues in how we conceive a decent regime, locally and internationally.

Poem: Joseph Hutchison and E.E. Cummings on John Yoo

In response to my post on Gerard Anderson’s attempt to praise John Yoo/Cheney for pettifogging, after the fact, criminal, still secret “distinctions” about torture at the expense of Jon Stewart here, Joe Hutchison, author of A Marked Man on Silas Soule – see here – and Colorado poet laureate, sent the following (amusing) musing on E.E. Cummings and Yoo:

mr yoo will not be missedwho as a torture apologistsold a thousand lies as truenot excluding mr yoo’s

Joe”

I am John Evans professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and author of Marx's Politics:Communists and Citizens (Rutgers, 1980), Democratic Individuality (Cambridge, 1990), Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy (1999) and Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence (Chicago March, 2012).